Project MKUltra - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra <comment><USER2> Articles like this always make me revisit the Vigilant Citizen website [0]. The site often reviews music videos and large events like the MTV Music Video Awards and looks at the symbolic imagery used. The subject of these videos often seems to be mind control of the artists.

I don't want to sound like some crazy guy, I just find the whole mind control theme interesting without having a real opinion on the subject.

I always wonder what's the point in rehashing the same imagery so often by so many different artists and events. To me it seems pointless. But maybe it has some effects on the youths that watch these videos every day? Or is it just meant to look "cool" or "interesting"?

I certainly don't watch much television anymore these days and I don't seem to recall videos that used such imagery in my youth. On the whole, I think videos in the 90s and early 2000's were often much more interesting or funny.

\---

[0]: [http://vigilantcitizen.com/?s=mind+control](http://vigilantcitizen.com/?s=mind+control)</comment>


Show HN: GitHub Stats in the Mac OS X Menu Bar - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Shikkic/gitbar <comment><USER2> Thanks for bitbar @Shikkic, this will really help me to keep up my daily OSS contributions. Your plugin is also the reason why I downloaded bitbar, as I knew about it but never had the need to bloat up my menu bar even more. But this gave me all the reason I needed! :D

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Glad to hear it! I'm trying to maintain more OSS work myself. I love bitbar and totally encourage everybody to play with it and make their own plugin.

<comment><USER3> Bitbar is really great, I made a simple plugin for Gitlab in a very short time : [https://github.com/matryer/bitbar- plugins/blob/master/Dev/Gi...](https://github.com/matryer/bitbar- plugins/blob/master/Dev/Gitlab/gitlab_projects.js)

I also made a menu at my company to improve our workflow : [http://imgur.com/EpVb300](http://imgur.com/EpVb300)

Thank you bitbar !

<comment><USER4> Thanks for making a GitLab version! Consider adding it to [https://about.gitlab.com/applications/](https://about.gitlab.com/applications/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's a hugely wide menu bar app. Chews up nearly a quarter of the menu bar on my MBP.

<comment><USER2> I loved the idea of this Bar Widget, but I had the same issues are you @FireBeyond.

Luckily you can easily hack the plugin as there's just 1 small file you have to edit (gh.5m.js)

The way you calculate your percentage is also super weird @Shikkic. It's all about daily contributes, but yet you calculate your percentage via the total contributes? I mean common, that will just give a fucking huge numbers. Also total contributes are not a stat I care about. Either way love the idea and the execution is quite cool :) Using it right now (albeit a tiny bit modified version)

here is a screenshot of my modified version (much smaller width, and some stats that I don't care about removed): [http://www.imgpaste.net/image/AQBp](http://www.imgpaste.net/image/AQBp)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I need to make a few tweeks but thanks for the feeback! I love what you did to it, it looks great!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's a similar one by Tadeu Zagallo of Facebook. Pretty nifty! [http://tadeuzagallo.com/GithubPulse/](http://tadeuzagallo.com/GithubPulse/)

<comment><AUTHOR> That is super nifty, love the design!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We all have private repos we tend to work on and it's really easy to neglect your OSS work. So, I created Gitbar to make daily public contributions a habit. Gitbar is a OSX Menu Bar utility that shows your daily Github stats, streaks, and contributions. You can even set goals.

Check it out on github ([https://github.com/Shikkic/gitbar](https://github.com/Shikkic/gitbar))

</comment><comment><USER7> This is a completely different approach compared to other GitHub indicators and I have to say that I like the idea!

Does anyone know of a similar Linux-compatible tool?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I agree I like the approach of the menu bar since I see it the most. I'm not sure about Linux compatible tools though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm currently using this tool to keep up with my daily contributions. Love it!

<comment><USER9> Screenshot?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Slightly different idea, but I'd use a similar thing to this that shows how many (new?) open pull requests I have.

<comment><USER11> Have you tried Trailer? I've used it for over a year and it's been hugely helpful. [https://ptsochantaris.github.io/trailer/](https://ptsochantaris.github.io/trailer/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats so neat</comment></comment></comment>


Absurd Design: Surrealist Illustrations for Websites - Andrew-Jackson https://absurd.design/?ref=hackernews <comment><AUTHOR> Promotional upvotes are not allowed here and will get your accounts and sites banned.

</comment><comment><USER2> This is awesome. Going to add it to a project that I was working on a new landing page for today.

</comment><comment> Andrew-Jackson Hello Hacker News! —

Makers comment:

Absurd Design is a project which comes with a set of free surrealist illustrations for landing pages. With this project we try to introduce a new way and visual perception for landing pages. The main idea is to let your visitors a chance to think and connect the creative imagination and the artistic vision.

Problem The majority of landing pages come with really good illustrations, but all the illustrations represent the product or service functionality or features and don't offer a chance to visitors to think about the message.

Solution Create illustrations that will connect the artistic mood and every illustration can be interpreted in a different mode, depending of human imagination in relation with your website.

About Us We're a couple from Moldova that live in Barcelona, Spain. Diana is a designer in love with everything design-related. Andrian is a web projects maker. We're minimalists, we think so and we try to be so (but we're not perfect, and that's good).

We'd love to get some feedback and we're happy to answer questions!</comment>


Unroll.Me stops serving the EU - <AUTHOR> https://gdpr-eu.unroll.me/ <comment><USER2> They seem to think by asking users 'Are you from the EU' makes all problems go away. If it only was that easy.</comment>


Show HN: Premier Crowdfunding News & Strategy  - <AUTHOR> http://crowddistrict.com/ CrowdDistrict is a premium news source that showcases the best of crowdfunding. CrowdDistrict features the best project on Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, and other crowdfunding platforms. <comment><USER2> Very cool site. would like to see more projects that ones of the front page.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are looking for ReDesigning tips if you have any? What would you like to see on the homepage?

<comment><USER2> more projects and a better understanding of the category they fall under

<comment><AUTHOR> Noted. Thank you very much.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Vivafit: AI Fitness Coach - <AUTHOR> https://vivafit.app/ <comment><AUTHOR> Vivafit is a fitness app based on AI-technologies which replaces workouts with a personal trainer. The camera analyzes all the movements during the exercises and adjust them if necessary.

<comment><USER2> I've developed an open source VR workout game that tries to provide a full body workout, but one thing I am missing is an external view of the player to adjust their exercise if it is not done correctly.

It looks like Vivafit could be that companion that could do that.

Any interest in working together?

The game is called VRWorkout and currently available for free on Sidequest but PC VR is coming soon

[https://vrworkout.at](https://vrworkout.at)</comment></comment>


Spammers exploit open redirects on US government websites - <AUTHOR> http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/10/23/spammers-exploit-open-redirects-government/ <comment><USER2> October 23, 2012

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4675167></comment>


The Power of the Death Star - <AUTHOR> http://www.epsilon.practicum.os3.nl/assets/death_star_en.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a funny (though serious) article I wrote some time ago.</comment>


Slow Reading: the antithesis of speed reading - <AUTHOR> https://www.theindy.us/slow-reading/ <comment><USER2> My ex-girlfriend used to joke that I was "functionally illiterate." She had gotten the habit from her mother of going to the local library and getting a half dozen books, which she'd have read in two weeks, before she returned to the library. I read maybe 2 novels a year at most. However, she would always marvel at how I could recall details and recount sequences of events or describe memorable scenes. All she was ever left with was a kind of emotional impression from having read the books, and could recall very little. She would also be bewildered at watching me read. Sometimes I would read just a few pages, then put the book down then stare at the walls, absorbing what I'd just read. There was one part of "Kavalier and Klay" that was less than a dozen pages long, but took me two days to get through.

<comment><USER3> Similar.

My ex read crazy fast and learned a lot of his vocabulary from reading -- and mispronounced a lot of stuff, couldn't remember details, etc.

I was in gifted classes in school. I have always read slower than most of the people around me, like the ex, my sister, my kids, my high school classmates. But, yes, I remember details, etc.

Before age and boatloads of prescription drugs stole my memory, I could, at times, nearly quote some paragraphs for a few weeks afterwards in some cases -- especially if I wrote it or if I read through it more than once for some reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nietzsche wrote about slow reading:

"Philologie nämlich ist jene ehrwürdige Kunst, welche von ihrem Verehrer vor allem eins heischt, beiseite gehn, sich Zeit lassen, still werden, langsam werden –, als eine Goldschmiedekunst und -kennerschaft des Wortes, die lauter feine vorsichtige Arbeit abzutun hat und nichts erreicht, wenn sie es nicht lento erreicht. Gerade damit aber ist sie heute nötiger als je, gerade dadurch zieht sie und bezaubert sie uns am stärksten, mitten in einem Zeitalter der »Arbeit«, will sagen: der Hast, der unanständigen und schwitzenden Eilfertigkeit, das mit allem gleich »fertig werden« will, auch mit jedem alten und neuen Buche: – sie selbst wird nicht so leicht irgend womit fertig, sie lehrt gut lesen, das heißt langsam, tief, rück- und vorsichtig, mit Hintergedanken mit offengelassenen Türen, mit zarten Fingern und Augen lesen... Meine geduldigen Freunde, dies Buch wünscht sich nur vollkommne Leser und Philologen: lernt mich gut lesen!"

"Philology is that venerable art which demands of its votaries one thing above all: to go aside, to take time, to become still, to become slow – it is a goldsmith's art and connoisseurship of the word which has nothing but delicate, cautious work to do and achieves nothing if it does not achieve it lento. But for precisely this reason it is more necessary than ever today, by precisely this means does it entice and enchant us the most, in the midst of an age of 'work', that is to say, of hurry, of indecent and perspiring haste, which wants to 'get everything done' at once, including every old or new book: this art does not so easily get anything done, it teaches to read well, that is to say, to read slowly, deeply, looking cautiously before and aft, with reservations, with doors left open, with delicate eyes and fingers . . . My patient friends, this book desires for itself only perfect readers and philologists: learn to read me well!"

<comment><USER5> I wonder whether Nietzsche wrote that because of his mother tongue... for me, switching between English and German is just like switching down 5 gears in a car...

I think of reading as a process of tuning between the mind of the writer and the reader.. like a dialogue, you can modulate the speed until you both feel comfortable with ..

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Few things are as pleasurable as slowly savoring the text imprinted on a paper or an e-book reader, especially fiction that engrossed you.

I always make sure to leave some relaxing music on before diving into my favorite piece of text/book. Practicing 'mindful reading' has greatly enhanced my reading experience and it goes hand-in-hand with slow reading. [0]

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/19/well/mind/how-to-be- mindf...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/19/well/mind/how-to-be-mindful- while-reading.html)

<comment><USER7> What are you reading on parchment? Pedantic but if you're meaning paper, paper and parchment are not the same thing.

<comment><USER6> Fixed. Sympathize with your pedantism.

<comment><USER8> *pedantry (intentionally self-referential!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The only reasonable approach is to adjust your reading speed based on the topic you're reading. Is it interesting or relevant? Read slower. Is it dense and complex? Read slower.

Are you just scanning or reading for hobby/light interest, maybe hoping to encounter something interesting? Read a bit faster and slow down when needed.

I find that there are so many weird misconceptions about "how you are supposed to read a book". Just read however you like, reading comprehension and regulating your speed based on the content is a skill, something you might want to practice. But you definitely don't have to speed-read or slow-read everything once you've learned how to do that.

<comment><USER10> _> reading comprehension and regulating your speed based on the content is a skill_

Knowing how to modulate is an important skill in programming and mathematics as well.

I've seen the two extremes of "failure to modulate" with programs, especially with new programmers (students/interns). Some will speed read through the program, never slowing down to pay attention to critical pieces that may help them discover how to fix a bug or implement a missing feature. Others will slowly and methodically read every line, wasting away days on what should take hours or minutes by performing a depth-first search through each stack at each program point.

I've also seen this failure to modulate in mathematics. Students who get to chapter 5 of a dense text before realizing they have no intuitive or even formal understanding of the definitions on page 1. And students who spend their entire week interrogating unimportant definitions or lemmas because they do not get a sense for the overall structure of the chapter before diving into details.

Reading is such an important skill, and we as a society do a fairly good job at teaching how to read non-technical material. But reading skills are probably the most important thing that's (not) taught in math and CS.

<comment><USER11> Assuming that the student is a complete beginner. Do you think the best way to read a challenging technical book is to speed-read at the start - to pinpoint the essentials and get an overall picture - then read again, this time slower?

At both speeds, it's still deliberate reading.

Maybe you know more techniques which are better?

<comment><USER9> #BEGINRAMBLE

I personally feel there are multiple "levels" or "layers" to understanding a book. It's a bit loose, but I'd say technical books have "structure", "content", "detail" and "cohesion".

The structure of the book is how chapters, section, subsections and the index are related to each other. You can learn about the structure by taking a look at the index, reading chapter intros/outros/summaries, and you will get a better feeling for it while reading the book as well.

The content is basically just everything in the book except any meta-content, such as headings, the index and references, etc... So graphs, text, chapters, blablalba

The details of the book are the most relevant, precise, thought-out content, you could alternatively call these "topics". Consider a given chapter of any book, it usually introduces a topic, gives some examples, counterexamples, might tell a story about it, it could add a debate, show a graph, and it might describe sub-topics. The whole chapter is mostly about that topic as a whole anyway. That's the detail.

Lastly, the "cohesion" is how the book's topics are interrelated on a detailed level. For example, what implications does the content introduced in chapter 5 have on chapter 6? And on chapter 4? Some concepts take multiple chapters (or books!) to comprehend as a whole. Sometimes a book needs to introduce some concepts before the bigger picture can be explained. This cohesion, in my mind, is related to the "larger than the sum of its parts" idea.

I guess the idea of cohesion can also be extended to how the book's content and ideas relate to what you already know, or other books you may or may not have read. Again; it's how the topics interrelate.

Different reading styles, writing exercises and re-readings of a book will give expand your understanding in those 4 layers.

For example, skimming (30 min, skip through entire book) will give you a vague but helpful foundational feeling for the structure and cohesion of the book. Likewise, speed-reading will give a reasonable foundational feeling for the content and detail of the book. Writing a mind-map of a chapter, asking questions about paragraphs, summarizing chapters will improve your understanding of the content and topics.

I personally feel that I often don't completely "understand" a book, I believe that if I take the time to work on those 4 layers of understanding on every level of the book, I would.

I strongly strongly strongly recommend taking a look at the book "how to read a book", the concepts I just stated are my own, but the book helped me completely rethink about how I approach reading in general. I used to be afraid of tacking huge books, I feel like I can actually read them with some confidence

#ENDRAMBLE

<comment><USER11> I'm a rambler too so it's all fair ;)

See, I've been focusing on reading this year, more specifically to find out what my style and interests are, and how I can develop them further. For me it's unrealistic to "just read away" - there are many different types of books and courtesy to our digital world/ genes/ whatever, my brain is definitely re- wired so that it's very difficult to maintain focus for long. So naturally I'm interested in reading techniques (and other types of acquisition) and what others' experiences are like.

But the deeper I go into this project, I am also beginning to wonder that perhaps, even self-proclaimed bookworms may not actually be reading as effectively as they think they are. By "effective", I mean getting the same- ish level of clarity that the author had when writing it. And so I think you're right about books having layers of meaning. Which this alone has powerful implications: it means a _reading list_ should not be a ticking box exercise, as so many of us think, but a _reference library_ \- you have the freedom to read and revisit however you like, depending on your current intellectual needs. And it also means that books are actually very dynamic and so you shouldn't really take them _too_ seriously - it's OK to get an understanding to a limited level only.

It's interesting, let's see how this reading project goes.

Anyway back to chomping dense technical books. This is definitely a big weakness of mine - no matter how interesting a book is, I just cannot stay motivated for long. But it may be because I'm approaching it the wrong way. I generally like to dip in and out, and be very selective about what to savour in. So I am probably treating technical books wrongly - taking it too lightly when each should be an individual project, really. I think another factor is confidence - it's easy to get intimidated but I find that the more I become familiar with the concepts and basics, the tome gets easier. Which means it's necessary to have a "learning pathway" of books e.g. Sal Khan's circuit videos and "Electronica for Dummies" before the granddaddy "The Art of Electronics".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _"As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value to you than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself."_

– Arthur Schopenhauer

I've always been struck by this quote, because I think Schopenhauer is fundamentally right. Information is only useful when you master it inside and out.

<comment><USER13> I like this quote, but if libraries were hash tables with O(1) lookup time a large messy one is better.

Sometimes the way thoughts pop into my head I think brains are more like hash tables than arrays.

Of course, extreme over simplification :D

<comment><USER14> > but if libraries were hash tables with O(1) lookup time a large messy one is > better.

If the lookup time was O(1) then it's not a large messy library, it's a large neat library.

Besides, the "neatness" of your mind is an metaphor for your ability understand a piece of knowledge in the context of the whole. This is not a literal organizational issue, but a conceptual understanding of how different ideas "fit" together. It takes time and effort to deeply understand and connect a single piece of knowledge to the whole.

This quote is not about your ability to quickly recall X, but your ability to relate X to A, B, and C.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For those interested, I recommend reading "How to Read a Book" by Adler. It basically outlines the details of getting the most out of reading in different contexts.

<comment><USER16> Agreed. It is an incredible book at getting you to really think about how you read.

Only tangentially related: When it came out and became a bestseller, another book came out kind of making fun of the title. It was called "How to Read Two Books."

<comment><USER17> Should have made a video called "How to Read 'How to Read a Book.'"

Necessary break in the irony of a book telling you how to read books.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm dyslexic. I've had the benefit of a great education and my reading has gotten a lot better over the years. Of course, when I couldn't read at all, I didn't enjoy it. But between 4th and 7th grade, when I _could_ read, but only slowly, I practically inhaled books. After that, I learned to read faster, which was great for the demands of high school classes but, I have realized more recently, killed my love of reading. I think returning to the way I used to read, where I labored over every word, may help me regain it.

<comment><USER19> I have dyslexic issues and always find myself falling back to reading each word. But as an interesting antidote I hated to read before 6th grade and after that just inhaled fiction books until collage where I shifted back to slow reading dense technical writings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This makes me think of required summer reading in lower and middle school. I hated it so much. We'd have to read something like 5-10 books over the three month break. It was totally counter productive. The point was to get us to read a lot, thinking that's how we'd learn to enjoy it (or something like that). I'd have to skim through as much as I could hoping to pick up enough to BS my way through a book report the first week of school. If anything, it may have taught me to not take homework seriously and to cheat. Luckily, I didn't become a big cheater.

Maybe had they just assigned a single book and encouraged us to read it slowly and carefully, we could have enjoyed reading more and actually absorbed the text.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'll wager the web, and especially handheld devices, are destroying people's reading comprehension. I find myself skipping through text, looking for that kernel. I always print out technical articles. The printed page is a cue to slow down.

</comment><comment><USER22> I've noticed the complete opposite effect.

I used to read really slow and take down meticulous notes.

Just starting a book meant I had predefined ideas of "ok, you're in this for the long haul, you know how much effort it will take to consume this material". That in itself is a reading deterrent.

If your goal of reading is to learn something new and improve yourself, then you're way better off seeing if you can learn the important bits of the book (80 / 20 rule), and then repeat this process for 10 different books in a similar subject.

The difference between fully slow reading and taking notes on a book could be on the order of 15 dedicated "real" hours vs 30 minutes of skimming and reading specific things that highly relate to what you're doing now.

If you only read a book carefully once, then chances are you're going to forget most of what you read anyways. Might as well make the best use of your time and devour as much as you can to get you going and then spend a majority of your time doing the thing that you were trying to improve from reading in the first place.

Basically treat books as something you'll reference / skim many times over instead of being a super thorough "only once" event where you treat it as if someone is going to give you a graded test when you're done.

<comment><USER23> Do both: read books quickly, re-read books slowly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have never been a fan of fast reading techniques/book summary services. I like taking my time with books (maybe too much sometimes) because I feel understand the author's idea better if I get some time to reflect on the words. So I usually try not to rush through books. However, slow reading (the concept described in this article) makes me feel sleepy... I guess I stick to my inner reading speed.

<comment><USER25> I think of it the other way around. While I didn't get much from the 800wpm level, I found the training on not backtracking and understanding the eye movements allowed me to understand better, not worse, and still allowed me to stop at my leisure. It's less that I'm rushing through the book and more that I'm being more intentional about it.

<comment><USER26>
        I found training on not backtracking and understanding eye movements allowed me to understand better ...

What did you train in regards to backtracking & eye movement? It seems vaguely familiar to how I read (backtracking over paragraphs pretty frequently) -- is there some reading I can do on this?

<comment><USER27> Tony Buzan's speed reading book brings this up, particularly the eye movement.

The eye has two types of movement: the one you use to move from one object to another; and then the one that follows an object. He recommends the latter when speed reading, using a pen or pointy thing as an aid, your eyes following the tip as you sweep it across the page. You can move it from side to side, or down the middle, or zig-zagging, etc.

You accompany this with a metronome, to move the pen in regular movements.

I think in time the idea is that you can abandon the pen and metronome once you've got used to reading this way.

<comment><USER28> Aren't saccades inevitable unless actually tracking something?

<comment><USER27> Maybe. One could try imagining an invisible line and tracking that. It helps not to focus on the text itself, but on the space just above the page, just as the tip of pen would be hovering above the page as it sweeps across. That way the eye doesn't fixate on words and cause saccades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I speed read things that can be speed read. I did speed read this article, about 12-15 seconds, and nothing would have been lost on a re-read, which I did. Within this, some sentences were a bit too engaging which was annoying.

I don't normally choose to read like this, but it's a quick way to find something to stick and pause on. The only thing that made me stick and pause was the use of italics. The typography of the blog and line spacing is super comfortable, a sure assistance to speed reading.

A novel, creative writing, a requirements document, analysis paper, no. Because every word has to have been carefully chosen. I enjoy that coz it's not writing for information distribution for the sake of it.

<comment><USER19> What's your technique for speed reading on the screen? I learned tricks for books that relied on my hand to help but they were not useful when reading a screen.

<comment><USER29> That's why I explicitly mentioned the comfort of the text size and line- spacing. Because that doesn't often happen.

I load an ebook to calibre and go from there. 28px, about 12-20 words per line, usually works for a phone at arm's length or a laptop at desk length.

I never learnt via any hand techniques, just picked it up on paper, a half-day (less than that as.. lunch) and good pointers. I think hand-blocking would have restricted speed. Your hand is not as fast as our eyes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Speed reading also means "speed understanding". Glancing over words is not speed reading.

Speed reading means you could factually proof you could read extremely fast and retain most of the facts of the text.

From my experience, there is people out there that could do that (after extensive training). The main problem is that you need a standardized way of displaying the text so the mind could understand it super fast.

I have met speed readers personally in Spain, France and Germany.

For example HN does not let you speed read because of the format with long lines.

On a practical way way most text is not formatted for speed reading, it should be preprocessed first, which is illegal because of copyright in most countries.

</comment><comment><USER31> I've always been a slow reader. There was a time when I considered that to be a fault. I tried to learn faster reading a number of times, but each time I found it unnatural and not very enjoyable. I have also noticed that reading slowly allows me to focus better and gain deeper understanding of the text. At some point I stopped trying to become a fast reader and now I'm just a slow, happy reader.

</comment><comment><USER32> Down right now, but here's a mirror: [https://web.archive.org/web/20180704140141/https://www.thein...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180704140141/https://www.theindy.us/slow- reading/)

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm a really slow reader, I wish I was faster.

My girlfriend has double the reading speed.

I have to read every word for itself :/

I can get to 100 pages per hour, but only if I identify filler paragraphs early on and skip them.

</comment><comment><USER34> Slow coding next? Could save the world one day

<comment><USER35> I've seen far too much of it

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> It depends on how interesting the content it. Captivating content is easier to savor than boring, predictable content.

</comment><comment><USER37> It took me a year to read Seneca's letters to Lucilius. And it was the most fruitful reading in my life.

</comment><comment><USER38> Same goes for binge-watching a series.

Imagine watching all seasons of black mirror in one day...

</comment><comment><USER39> Ive not had a more validating experience on HN.

</comment><comment><USER40> Next hype: "Normal reading", synthesizing the benefits of Slow Reading and Fast Reading.

<comment><USER41> I'm sure there's an undercurrent reflective of a generalizable reality at work here.

Speed reading was desirable when lots of new exciting things were emerging in the late nineties. Note that simply "reading fast" didn't prevent the dot com bust.

Now, we have lots of new things, but they aren't exciting to us. In fact the prevailing wind is that of fatigue and overload. So now, going slow is perhaps perferable, whatever difference it might actually make.

In an economic sense, slow downs are viewed by go-getters as a reason to panic. "Oh no! I won't get my lunch at noon!" is how best to interpret that panic.

We actually have a lot of cool new things that magically appeared over the past thirty years, and as someone who has lived through it all, I feel like treadmill processes such as dependency hell and relentless up-versioning to bigger numbers robbed me of opportunities to deeply explore promising technologies.

But speed reading wasn't what was going to fix past problems, so why should slow reading fix current problems. It does seem to point to other facts though, if one chooses to look with those eyes.</comment></comment>


Could Depression Be an Immune Response to Stress? A New Study Suggests an Answer - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2018/07/23/could-depression-be-an-immune-response-to-stress-a-new-study-suggests-an-answer/amp <comment><USER2> (In mice.)</comment>


What The Cost Of Renting An Apartment In Boston Looks Like - <AUTHOR> http://www.wbur.org/2013/01/30/boston-apartments-heat-map

<comment><USER2> Might be interesting to combine the data with that from fear.com (sorry - police.uk, or whatever the equivalent site is in your country if you have one) to locate places where lower rents intersect with favourable crime-rates.

Another extension might be a third layer that indicates travel times to a destination of your choice.

Finally, demographic information might be useful.

End result: find an affordable place, in a safe neighbourhood populated by people like you. I realise the quality of data available would make this near- impossible. Today.

<comment><USER3> This particular map can be approximated pretty well by the function 1/(public transit time to Park Street Station). There are a few exceptions, mostly in areas with higher crime rates than the rest of the region.

<comment><USER4> I also made a map of that: <http://www.jefftk.com/boston_transit_quality> (details: <http://www.jefftk.com/news/2010-11-17>)

(The map isn't actually 1/time-to-park-street. It's average time from each point to every other point.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Walking is valuable.

Note that it largely correlates to the WalkScore for Boston: <http://www.walkscore.com/MA/Boston>

I don't know why people don't make walking a bigger deal in where they choose to live in the U.S. I love driving, but

A large part of the reason I've remained in New Hampshire is because my town is extremely walkable from my house, with several cafes, good restaurants, and my work all less than 10 minutes away by foot.

(Of course there are other reasons. I "run" a large victorian-era house and rent spare rooms to friends, living for effectively free. On the other hand, I also don't know why more young professionals don't do _that_ , because the money I save is amazing, and the only downside are more chores, or people problems if you live with friends you end up not liking)

<comment><USER6> I live in the country side and walk to my office through farms, cows, horses, and crops.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Want to create one for your city? Here is the source: <https://github.com/jeffkaufman/apartment_prices>

<comment><USER7> From [https://github.com/jeffkaufman/apartment_prices/blob/master/...](https://github.com/jeffkaufman/apartment_prices/blob/master/query_padmapper.py#L103-L105)

      The guy who wrote Padmapper says this tool puts a pretty heavy load on his server and he
      would rather it was run no more than once a month.  If you're just looking for some
      apartment data, I've put some in apts-2013-01-29, which is for Boston in January 2013.

Please be considerate when running this. It does multiple querries to padmapper, one for each choice in number of bedrooms (0 to 9) times the number of 25$ increments in rent between 100$ and MAX_RENT. Consider tweaking those variables and maybe the 100 lower limit at [https://github.com/jeffkaufman/apartment_prices/blob/master/...](https://github.com/jeffkaufman/apartment_prices/blob/master/query_padmapper.py#L85)

<comment><USER4> When I first wrote it I talked to padmapper, and they said that as long as I wasn't going to run it very often it made more sense to keep with the horribly inefficient method in query_padmapper.py than for him to put a bunch of time into making something fancier available. Though a dump of the whole country doesn't sound like it would be that hard and making a US-sized map would be awesome.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, it's a bit more worrying that it's public code, but I imagine that it will be fairly limited, and it seems like people find it useful, so it's probably not a big deal as long as people don't use it too frequently. If there's enough interest, perhaps I should make this heatmap an option on PM itself so that people don't have to all make their own? Would you be OK with my using the code for that?

<comment><USER4> > perhaps I should make this heatmap an option on PM itself so that people > don't have to all make their own?

That would be awesome.

The current code drawing code is probably too slow for this, though.

<comment><USER8> Cool cool. It'll probably take me longer if it needs to be rewritten. I guess it's not tile-based?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What is the value of an aggregated price per room across all apartment sizes? A 1 room apartment is going to cost more than half of a 2 room apartment, which is going to cost more than one third of a 3 room apartment.

The price per room seems like it would be more useful if it was shown as "price per room for 1bdrm" and able to be switched to 2bdrm or 3bdrm and so on.

<comment><USER4> What you say would be true for bedrooms, but one of the two maps I made is for rooms (1+bedrooms): <http://www.jefftk.com/apartment_prices/rooms-2013-01>

Breaking it down by bedroom each map would have fewer points. The most common apartment size is the two bedroom, and there are only 986 listings there.

<comment><USER4> You know, 986 samples ought to be enough. Here's a map of just the two bedroom apartments: <http://www.jefftk.com/apartment_prices/rooms-2013-01--2br>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The most costly factor is the fact that you would be living in Boston.

<comment><USER11> I assume the comment above is facetious but, as someone who would like to move to the US for work, I'm curious why people living in other big cities dislike Boston?

<comment><USER12> I love Boston, but the weather can be unbearably annoying at times. Massachusetts is all about extremes, with high heat and humidity in the summer and freezing cold temperatures in the winter. Combine this with a lot of rain, snow and in between and you've got Boston.

That being said, if I hadn't moved to the bay area Boston would have been my second choice. I've spent most of my life in Massachusetts though so I'm a bit bias.

<comment><USER11> Thanks. I don't like extreme cold but if that's the worse thing about Boston then it doesn't sound so bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder how different the map would look if it showed median price/bedroom rather than the mean.

</comment><comment><USER14> My personal title: "Why I moved to New Hampshire"

As a remote worker, the cost of living in Boston is just an unnecessary expense for me. Lower taxes too. My new rent + utilities is less than 800/mo for a 2br.

</comment><comment><USER15> 1800 / bedroom? That'd be an amazing deal in SF.

<comment><USER16> I was puzzled by this too, but I think it's an artifact of the way the map is done. I live in one of those $1800+ zones and I couldn't find a 1BR on the market for under $3000 last summer. My guess would be that mean per bedroom would be $2500 in that area (including studios and economy of scale for larger places), but I bet it gets lumped in with $1800+.

<comment><USER17> Agreed. I live in Kendall Square, and over the past two years rent has gone up 10%, and _studio's_ start at $2700. in this area 1BR > $3K.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What they don't include here is the money you end up spending repairing the apartment (yes, repairing an apartment) to make it livable. At least I saw a fair bit of this in Boston. Unless you want to spend an utter fortune, you might be getting an overpriced slum.

<comment><USER4> What sort of repairs are you talking about? The only times apartments I've lived in have needed repairs we asked the landlord to do them.</comment></comment>


De Beers to sell diamonds made in a lab - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-29/de-beers-is-said-to-make-u-turn-by-selling-man-made-diamonds <comment><USER2> Won't that make them burn on both ends?

<comment><USER3> The markets for natural and constructed diamonds don't really overlap. People who want one type are typically opposed to wanting the other. De Beers will gladly provide the means to verify what type of stone you're buying, because the real value they add.</comment></comment>


Interview with Dr. Amelia Estwick, ethical hacker and cybersecurity professional - <AUTHOR> https://surfshark.com/blog/dr-a-estwick-safety-of-your-personal-data-online-is-a-life-and-death-issue <comment><USER2> Wow they got ex-NSA talking, insider knowledge, nice. TBH where I work in IT females are mostly PR or HR and only few developers, and those could be TLs too</comment>


Ask HN: Snapchat employee vesting schedule - <AUTHOR> After the first year 10% vests; by the end of the second year, another 20% has vested in gradually increasing allotments; another 30% vests through the course of the third year. The final 40% vests through the fourth year.<p>Source: https://www.theinformation.com/loyalty-pays-off-for-snapchat-employees?shared=73eee1 <comment><USER2> My last company's retention package after their [bad] acquisition had this vesting schedule. The company knew damn well that most people would leave or be forced out before the 3rd year, and that's exactly what happened. This sort of vesting is the most employee-unfriendly bullshit out there. If I was made an offer with this sort of schedule I would immediately decline and look elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER3> Guess a lot of people aren't going to pass their performance reviews in their 3rd year.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is where you negotiate a high signing bonus. Amazon does something similar- their offers vest 5-15-40-40, but they include a signing bonus and guaranteed first year bonus to offset it. So with a schedule like this, I would suggest figuring out how much money you want to make per year, and negotiate a signing bonus to hit that number.

<comment><USER2> For senior+ engineers this means a first-year signing bonus of more than six figures. Is Amazon really willing to pony up this sort of cash up front?</comment></comment>


Chinese app on Xi's ideology allows data access to users' phones, report says - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/chinese-app-on-xis-ideology-allows-data-access-to-100-million-users-phones-report-says/2019/10/11/2d53bbae-eb4d-11e9-bafb-da248f8d5734_story.html <comment><USER2> Basically, remove the app: "Study the Great Nation" if you have it.</comment>


Google Brings in Chief for Self-Driving Cars - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-brings-in-chief-for-self-driving-cars-1442199840 <comment><USER2> Same story without paywall: [http://www.ibloomberg.net/google-brings-in-chief- for-self-dr...](http://www.ibloomberg.net/google-brings-in-chief-for-self- driving-cars/)

<comment><USER3> A Google redirect also works: [https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCAQqQIwAGoVChMIwOLI4732xwIVBxGSCh3lDghZ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fgoogle- brings-in-chief-for-self-driving- cars-1442199840&usg=AFQjCNGAQcoV9poPqRTZNOkKL6E6S_pJsA&sig2=DwunLefna1TxYSjqq- xJdQ)

<comment><USER4> Why is there so much discussion about paywalls on HN? Can someone create a FAQ? The first several comments so far are essentially about the paywall. It's all noise. We need to increase the signal.

<comment><USER5> From the FAQ:

Are paywalls ok?

It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.

In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just yesterday I saw a silver ragtop Sebring hitting a kid on a scooter in my apartment complex, and immediately backed out of the street and sped away. The kid was fine but the earlier we bring these cars into mainstream the more lives we will save.

<comment><USER7> 30,000+ deaths annually in the U.S. alone is an awfully high price. Even _marginal_ safety improvements would save many, many people. And that's not even counting the many more people who are mamed and left debilitated.

Then, there's the economics of car ownership. Cars are the second most expensive capital asset most people have after their house. They sit idle, depreciating, taking up valuable land 95% of the time on average. A self- driving car is very complementary to services like Uber. If self-driving cars could be shared, increasing vehicle utilization past 5%, then we could repurpose vast swaths of unproductive urban land.

Once fewer people are owning cars, and instead paying a la carte, it also restructures the choice architecture of driving. Without a default option sitting in the driveway, I suspect that people may opt to walk, bike, or take transit with more regularity as well.

As a planner, I'm slightly more bullish on the potential of self-driving cars to remake transportation than my peers are. It was only a couple of years ago that I attended a demand management conference keynote in which the well-known (in planning circles) speaker was cracking jokes about how self-driving cars wouldn't change anything. I disagree--I just hope the future gets here soon.

<comment><USER8> I think you underestimate how much people (at least 30 and older, but a good number under 30 also) like owning their own cars and driving them.

There is definitely some tunnel vision here. Not everyone lives in densely populated urban areas where owning a car is already almost not worth the cost and hassle.

I can't see myself ever owning or time-sharing a self-driving car.

<comment><USER9> That's why I think this new generation of transportation will be the first realistic challenge to car ownership. Think about it: virtually instant transportation, available on demand, and you can vary the vehicle based on your needs. Take a small car to Ikea and a truck back home. Take a large car out that evening with a group of friends. Shuttle systems that aggregate passengers (but still make custom stops) will drive the prices down further.

You don't have to drive (leaving you free to do other activities), and you don't have to park / store the vehicle. (Our last hotel charged $65 PER DAY for parking.) Under this new model, parking can quickly become the least productive land use and will start to get much more scarce.

Finally, you likely won't ever own or time-share a self-driving car. They'll be provided by the likes of Google or Uber or Tesla as a utility model.

Will people still drive for the joy of it? Absolutely, but it will become more of a hobby / specialty market, just like private piloting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In the article there is this idea that Google will get auto makers to actually make cars that use Google technology - a bit like the 'Android' model in a way, co-opt everyone except 'Apple' and 'Microsoft'.

This contrasts with the Elon Musk attitude where the auto makers can be consigned to the dustbin of history - there isn't going to be some hideous GM/Chrysler/Ford effort 'powered by Tesla technologies' because at heart Elon Musk really does not want to do business with them.

As I understand it there are many companies working on the self driving car with all of Google's rivals going for an iterative approach, e.g. a car that can stay in lane, park, not go over the speed limit or hit the car in front. However, this is not 'driving', i.e. in a city with lots of pedestrians around. Only Google are going for the everything always automated being the product, the rivals are going for just the 'easy' bits with a view to adding the features later. The problem with this later approach is that people expect the car to do all of the driving, they get their phones and laptops out, hence, when they have to take the wheel they are not exactly prepared for it. So the Google approach is better.

If I was CEO of Hyundai (or any other manufacturer) I would just wait for Google to launch 'Android for cars' and go with that rather than do the Volvo/BMW/Mercedes iterative approach.

<comment><USER11> Why not take both approaches? Volvo, BMW and Mercedes will presumably be welcomed by Google if they opt to use the Google technology in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder why they chose to use the word 'Chief' versus 'CEO' when the article uses CEO to describe the situation. At first I thought Sebastian Thrun would be the subject of this article...

</comment><comment><USER13> Google really needs to be thinking further ahead. Since they're not interested in decreasing car-based transportation (imagine if they spent all that money on a first world train system), then with climate change and rising sea levels, I suggest they get into self-driving _boats_. And nanotech sunscreen.</comment>


Show HN: Scraping Google's Covid Mobility Reports – US South in Trouble - <AUTHOR> https://lawsuit.org/coronavirus-mobility-reports-analysis/ <comment><AUTHOR> Strangely, Google never released maps of this important data, which shows which counties are heeding "stay at home orders," So, I scraped the data from the PDF's they released, and mapped it. I think this is one of the first geographic views of highly detailed information on behavioral changes due to Covid-19.

Sadly, it seems red states (in particular the US south) could really be in trouble.

</comment><comment><USER2> Is blue good or bad? What do the negative numbers mean? I feel lost in this visualization.</comment>


Inside NORAD's Cheyenne Mountain Combat Center - <AUTHOR> http://thememoryhole2.org/blog/inside-norad <comment><USER2> The author states that NORAD "... dropped the ball on 9/11.."

Let's be clear, NORAD did not drop the ball on 9/11\. You can certainly make the argument that the FBI, CIA, and NSA (and other US intelligence services) dropped the ball on 9/11, but NORAD did not. NORAD's primary goal has never been to stop terrorism/hijacking from occurring on passenger planes within the United States, but rather to warn of enemy planes and missiles from _entering_ the US. (this did change somewhat after 9/11, but that's after the fact...)

Frankly, I stopped reading the article after this line, because clearly the author doesn't know what they're talking about.

But if you're interested in this sort of thing, I'd recommend starting here: Strategic Air Command: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Air_Command](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Air_Command)

I just finished reading Command and Control by Eric Schlosser, it's a pretty decent primer on early US nuclear deterrence and such things as SAC and NORAD. (though there are better books specifically about SAC/NORAD, this is an overarching general/popular history.)

<comment><USER3> > Let's be clear, NORAD did not drop the ball on 9/11...NORAD's primary goal > has never been to stop terrorism/hijacking from occurring on passenger > planes within the United States, but rather to warn of enemy planes and > missiles from _entering_ the US.

I have no idea whether NORAD deserved any blame, but Wikipedia suggests NORAD's mission includes scrambling jets to deal with hijacked airplanes:

> Standing orders on September 11 dictated that, upon receiving a request for > assistance from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the North > American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) would normally order escort > aircraft to approach and follow an aircraft that was confirmed to be > hijacked in order to assure positive flight following, report unusual > observances, and aid search and rescue in the event of an emergency.[1] The > 9/11 Commission determined that on the morning of September 11, the FAA > deliberately did not adequately notify NORAD of the hijackings of Flights > 11, 77, 93, or 175 in time for escort aircraft to reach the hijacked > flights.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._military_response_during_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._military_response_during_the_September_11_attacks)

I mean, I guess you could argue that's not their "primary mission", but then I don't think that is in conflict with the OP's assertion that they "dropped the ball".

<comment><USER2> Yeah, just no.

From: [http://www.history.com/topics/9-11-timeline](http://www.history.com/topics/9-11-timeline) and the above linked Wikipedia article,

"8:40 am – The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) alerts North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)'s Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) about the suspected hijacking of Flight 11. In response, NEADS scrambles two fighter planes located at Cape Cod's Otis Air National Guard Base to locate and tail Flight 11; they are not yet in the air when Flight 11 crashes into the North Tower [at 8:46, the second plane hits at 9:03]."

The first report of Flight 11 being hijacked seems to be at 8:19am, given a lag of 21 minutes before the hijacking was reported to NORAD, and thus giving the F15's coming from Cape Cod to intercept and (possibly/probably shoot down?) the planes in 6 and 17 minutes respectively. And because planes don't magically leap into the sky, The F15's were not in the air until 8:53 (at which point Flight 11 had crashed 7 minutes previously, and it was just 10 minutes until Flight 175 hits the tower).

So yes, I don't believe there is any _reasonable_ proof that NORAD "dropped the ball".

If you really feel (like the OG author) that NORAD deserves some blame, great. But considering all the institutional failures of our intelligence services that occurred before the hijackers ever stepped foot on the planes, it's strange/weird/stupid/asinine/missing the point/whatever to blame NORAD for 9/11 (at any meaningful scale).

"Damn you NORAD for not having fighters capable of Mach 10 in the air knowing those planes were going to be hijacked at that specific day and already having a plan in place that gave a single fighter pilot the ability to shoot down a US flagged civilian airliner with the knowledge aforethought to know those airliners would be used as physical weapons rather than the traditional hostage taking that had occurred in the past!"

<comment><USER4> There's plenty of blame to go around.

But NORAD is responsible for aerial defense of the US. The fact that they didn't have fighters available was their responsibility, and I'd note that they have changed deployment so that that won't happen again.

I'd argue they didn't drop the ball on 9/11 - they dropped it years earlier when those deployment plans were agreed.

<comment><USER2> Do you also blame every police officer for failing to stop every murder, due to the police not being at the exact right place at the exact right time, knowing exactly what is about to happen, who is going to be the murderer, who is going to be the murdered, and the technique/weapon that is used to commit the crime? Because based on your reasoning, you should.

Edited to add:

The reason this argument bothers me so is that I'm not some great big fanboy of NORAD. But rather because the actual reasoning that goes behind blaming NORAD seems rather poor and includes a lack of understanding in regards to how we know things. If we then use hindsight to judge, we must be careful about the knowledge we have now, and our past and present assumptions. Sometimes these judgeents can make sense, sometime they don't. This is one of those cases.

9/11 was such a vastly different event in the history of the US, it seems quite unfair to blame NORAD for not predicting how things turned out. An argument that blames NORAD (imo) seems to blame NORAD because they were not omniscience and omnipotent.

We're looking back at a historical event where we have an incredible amount of information about exactly what happened. How could we assume that NORAD would have planes flying to cover NYC and Washington DC, two very important cities in the US. Do we also know exactly what their targets in those two large cities are going to be? That's a rather ridiculous argument.

This is especially true, because almost no one had used Airliners as guided missiles before. (And the reason that Flight 93 is so special, it shows that once the passengers were made aware of how the plane was no longer a traditional hijacking, they may have forced the terrorists to crash the plane without greater casualties.)

How do you stop these events? Let's assume that we know the hijackers were going to target those two cities, (and those 3 buildings) but couldn't the hijackers have targeted two other cities that didn't have air cover (and again, the fighters had de facto permission to shoot down hijacked civilian airliners). Do we give air cover to every minor city in the entire US? Do we put SAM sites in every US downtown? Let's just militarize the entire US, it wouldn't be the first time we had "Fortress America."

We can't always look back at an event knowing what we know now and judge it based on our knowledge at this moment versus knowledge at that moment. (This could quickly descend into a philosophical argument about knowledge, epistemology, etc., but I'm not going there.) But I will say that when analyzing things such as this, we have to be careful about our own assumptions and how we have learned the things we know, and then apply those to a historical event.

And that's all I'll say about that.

<comment><USER4> I don't blame NORAD for not predicting 9/11\. I blame them for not having planes close enough to be useful.

There's a difference. NORAD assumed they would always get early warning of an attack, and there weren't even enough operational fighters to do anything about it. Both of those things were bad assumptions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When I lived in Colorado Springs, my wife was friends with the wife of one of the military security guards at Cheyenne Mountain. We went on one of the last public tours of the facility in April of 1996 (IIRC).

None of the doors in the buildings had any indication of what went on behind them, just numbers, or maybe number-letter combinations. We followed our guide through a maze of these featureless corridors with the anonymous doors all closed, then were ushered into the command center.

It's pretty small, maybe holds 20 people around a conference table in close quarters. The folks who monitor everything in the world were right next door. One wall is a glass partition between the two rooms, but they pulled a curtain over that because there was some incident going on right then that we were not authorized to see.

Then we got a walking tour of much of the rest of the underground complex. The tunnels are wide and high, and there are big reservoirs of water and diesel fuel along the sides.

It was really fascinating. Of course no photos were allowed, but I still have a fairly good mental picture of parts of it 20 years later. The photo of the gigantic blast door took me right back - we walked through that very spot.

Edit: Thinking about it more, the most surprising thing was the scale of the place. It's a quarter mile from the tunnel entrance around the bend (meant as a way to diffuse the energy from a nuclear blast) to the big steel door. We all rode a bus back to that point. We walked about a half mile or maybe more to near the bottom of the other end of the main tunnel. If you look at the diagram in the story, it doesn't do justice to the sense of how much work went into carving out the middle of that mountain.

The conference room where command decisions were made might have only held 12, not 20. It was very small and spartan. I remember thinking, Shit, the fate of the world might be decided in a room smaller than our conference room at work.

Also, it might have been April 1998, not '96.

<comment><USER6> To me what's surprising is that they allowed tours at all, and sometimes even let you see the command center.

Or maybe this was all part of the plan to make the nuclear deterrent credible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The Canadian equivalent was in North Bay Ontario. I worked there briefly in the '90s. It was an interesting experience. I remember the guards and the bus ride to the bottom always made me nervous.

[https://legionmagazine.com/en/2014/11/the-brotherhood-of- und...](https://legionmagazine.com/en/2014/11/the-brotherhood-of-underground- mushroomers-deep-inside-a-cold-war-nerve-centre/)

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?autoplay=1&v=HRvPPnHMsyE](https://m.youtube.com/watch?autoplay=1&v=HRvPPnHMsyE)

</comment><comment><USER8> I used to live in Colorado Springs, just outside north fence of the Cheyenne Mountain Complex. It's not in active use these days--the USAF has moved their command center out to Peterson AFB east of town. If you're sneaky about it, you can actually hike to the top of Cheyenne Mountain, staying just outside the fenceline. You're crossing private property but once you get past the neighborhood, nobody will bother you.

</comment><comment><USER9> Cheyenne Mountain? I thought they just have deep space telemetry there!?

<comment><USER10> That, and an IMSAI 8080 named "Joshua."

<comment><USER11> Joshua was the WOPR, which was created by Hollywood. The IMSAI 8080 was David's home computer.

[http://www.imsai.net/movies/wargames.htm](http://www.imsai.net/movies/wargames.htm)

<comment><USER10> Doh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Two great websites that you can learn more about the Cold War and Nuclear weapons are:

[http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/](http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/)

[https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/](https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/)

</comment><comment><USER12> there has been a documentation / feature on german tv about this complex. It didn't appear to be very secretive anymore. They film the control room at 14:00

[http://www.prosieben.de/tv/galileo/videos/2016257-exklusive-...](http://www.prosieben.de/tv/galileo/videos/2016257-exklusive- einblicke-in-die-us-militaerbasis-cheyenne-mountain-clip)

</comment><comment><USER13> I recall people arguing that in strategic thinking, Cheyenne Mountain was/is basically a missile sponge, not a necessary control hub.

<comment><USER2> I don't think that was true, though it could have been possible at the very beginning when the Cheyenne Mountain complex was being built in 1960. But I'm skeptical for a few reasons.

One is the infamous "missile gap," which Kennedy arguably used to help win the 1960 election. This was a belief that the Soviets had many more warheads and missiles than us, and was completely untrue. If this was the belief (at least as of 1959/1960), then it doesn't make too much sense to design an expensive "missile sponge" such as this.

With the introduction of long range bombers, sub launched missiles and land based ICBM's, each side had so many nukes by the 60's, that the Soviets could have dropped a hundred nukes on the mountain and they would still have enough warheads to drop on every decently sized American city. (in 1965, they had over 6000 warheads, by 1970 they had over 11,000 [1], it grew from there.) It's also worth noting that nuclear warheads/missiles both became much more powerful and more accurate during this time.

Another thing that makes me question this, is the book Command and Control that I mentioned earlier in the comments. From reading it, the author's thesis is that there was no true command and control up until the 1980's (and even then...) That's to say, it existed, but it had many problems such as difficulty of communications between each missile site/air base/sub, slow speed in communications, various organizations that were involved, lack of adaptability, and then have all of this happen while the country is being nuked. (Many of the things that modern telecommunications were designed specifically for, and have arguably solved, less the very important human element.) All of this is to say, a centralized place and system for a control hub was very necessary to both determine if an attack was occurring and how to respond to said attack.

I don't think it would have been a very effective warhead sink.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_nuclear_weapons_sto...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_nuclear_weapons_stockpiles_and_nuclear_tests_by_country)

btw, with the Missile Gap, also check out the Bomber Gap. Yay American Military Industrial Complex, nothing like using a little bit of fear to make some money building unnecessary weapons of war and getting politicians elected to office! It's a win win!

<comment><USER13> It's not a claim that can be easily substantiated, but the USSR did have special ICBMs with single high yield warheads instead of MIRVs earmarked for that kind of target.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The Cheyenne complex isn't some classified thing anymore.

You can easily find docs on it: [https://youtu.be/lQPGJSIq3ys](https://youtu.be/lQPGJSIq3ys)

<comment><USER15> A five minute PR video on YouTube doesn't really amount to much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nothing about col. O'Neill (two Ls) or Daniel Jackson?

</comment><comment><USER17> Where's the Stargate?</comment>


Ask HN: Review my business idea please. - <AUTHOR>

So I have a small idea. I am not going to get rich on it, but this will be my first business so I am OK with total failure too.
Please tell me if this is stupid or what. Also, please give me any other comments or thoughts you have. Is this similar to some other idea? If so, which one?
The idea: Pay $1 to promote your business to 1,000 people. So you go to my website, pay $1 to tell a joke/anecdote/story to 1,000 people and your product/service is advertised to these 1,000 people. The people reading the joke pay nothing. They come to the website to read good quality jokes.
Here's an example:
Hello, I am Janet Wooster from Brooklyn, NY. I have been building iPhone Apps for small business since 2009. Many satisfied customers. Please call me at 555-5555 for a free consultation.
Here's my joke for you: A train was crossing America. One of the engines broke down. "No problem," the engineer thought, and carried on at half power. Then, farther down, the other engine broke down, and the train came to a standstill. So the engineer made the following announcement: "Ladies and gentlemen, I have some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that both engines have failed, and we will be stuck here for some time. The good news is that you decided to take the train and not fly."
So, bottom line question, will you pay $1 to tell 1,000 people about your product/service in exchange for telling them a good joke/story/anecdote? <comment><USER2> For me the problem is not so much the lack of targeting the ads for the business but instead the traffic you'll receive. Lets say you call some businesses in your area and they jump on board since it's a dollar, very little to lose if it doesn't produce any results, perhaps 10 of these businesses decide to do it and 10 more randomly from the internet(most of which will be spammers trying to get hits for their site). You've now spent time building, making sales calls, etc. to earn ~$20. You now also have to get 20000 impressions to these jokes. Since odds are that the business owners go the quick route and just nab a popular joke from another site (copied content, google doesn't like that) you're not going to have high rankings and are in direct competition with large humour sites that everyone knows by name because of their high brand recognition.

Point being: regardless of price points, CPM, what business advertises, etc. it's highly unlikely that you'll get large amounts of people looking for jokes traffic as well as business looking to advertise this way. Don't get me wrong though, if you want to build it then do just that but do it because you want to or keep working out some of the kinks until you have a strong model. At this stage though it is not really a 'business' and is a flawed model when it comes to CPM prices and potential revenue.

</comment><comment><USER3> What you've described is basically $1/CPM ads on a joke site with the added cost of having to come up with a Joke yourself.

I don't think many advertisers will go for this. Currently $1+/CPM is relegated for really invasive ads like popups.

So you'd have to make the site mostly ad, and less joke.

</comment><comment><USER4> How would you ensure that I, a business, is getting something in return ? Yes I can pay that dollar and even come up with a joke. How does that relate to what I do as a business ? Why would a consumer select me just because I shared a great joke ? What value am I providing ?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's definitely not targeted advertising like AdWords. It's kinda like the billboard on the highway. Everyone sees it and some people will find it useful.

I have a suspicion that if you told 10,000 people (completely randomly) about your product/service, 1-2 might want to learn more. No? Or, am I completely off base here?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> $1 is really not much to pay for your time in coming up with it. $10 would be more appropriate.

People spend advertising dollars in weird ways, so who am I to judge what people would pay for. Check out iwearyourshirt.com to see just how haphazardly they are spent!

</comment><comment><USER6> This would work if you could really target people. Example: Women 33-36, have a Visa, married, children below 5 years old, own a house, own a car, work full-time, and make in average $30k a year. I would pay a dollar for a thousand of them.

</comment><comment><USER7> lol...it depends how funny your jokes are. I would pay $1 to spread words about my app to additional 1000 people.

I like all the $1 app ideas. Just for the fun I made $1 site <http://www.mostpopularpicture.com>. Change the picture for a $1.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think this could work, if executed well. The only way to really know is to try :)

<comment><AUTHOR> So, would you pay $1 to tell 1,000 people a joke and then a bit about your product? Would you pay $2? $3? $10?

Just testing the possible price points.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How would you find the joke-readers/potential-customers?

<comment><AUTHOR> Through word-of-mouth and social media.

My thinking is as follows: People naturally want to share a good joke/anecdote. If I make the sharing frictionless, then good jokes should multiply viewers organically. No?

I have a feeling that people will return to a good joke site habitually.

The big "if" for me (I know, I know. Like all entrepreneurs, my Achilles heel is that I am too optimistic!) is how we get the good, the very best jokes on a regular basis.

For example, I don't know if you have read any good jokes lately, but I read the "the waiter and the spoon" joke on Slashdot a few days back and could help guffawing:

yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2988669&cid=40695313

<comment><USER10> It sounds like you want to create another social Ad platform and your marketing plan is based on social media and word of mouth (because it will go viral, right?). Sorry, I'm out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sounds like a Reddit you'd have to pay to post on.

</comment><comment><USER12> Boiling this down you are essentially talking about the same business idea that 99% of the internet runs on. Provide content and make money via advertisements.

Only difference is that you have to go through the legwork of finding your advertisers where as a typical joke site would just show affiliate ads and/or ad words.

I think the time you are spending finding advertisers to sponsor your jokes would negate any extra revenue you would get vs. just letting a ad network find the advertisers for you.

If your content is actually good and you execute this well and you manage to get traffic then you probably want to focus on your joke writing and not finding advertisers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, you misunderstood. My bad writing.

I am not writing the jokes. I am asking people to spend $1 to share _their_ joke with 1,000 people and then tell these readers about their product/service.

Does that make better sense?

<comment><USER12> Understand the idea now. It isn't so much different then the model that article sites use. Content providers post an article (provide content) and get the opportunity to link/ad back to their businesses. Then the article sites make money by having ad network ads all over the place. Maybe consider ditching the $1 and introducing your own ads. That way you will get a lot more content and you won't have to worry so much about building a relationship with your advertisers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Also there are a million joke sites out there you would have to either pick a very specific niche that isn't already packed full or you would have to have something that differentiates you from the other million. If you could get a somewhat famous comedian to write some jokes for you and get them to plug it in their shows and/or via their social media then you might get traffic. Would probably cost you more than the traffic is worth though.</comment>


ISIS "Cyber Caliphate" Hacks Pentagon Social Profiles, Leaks Files - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/12/cyber-caliphate/

<comment><USER2> So this is "hacked" like how anonymous used to hack government websites back in the day. They have control of social media websites and public facing webservers. Terrifying to the lay person and a joke to any technical people.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's the BBC article [1]. Does this mean that 2FA isn't active on these accounts? Or are they actually getting around 2FA?

The Techcrunch article has the following update, suggesting that this was real:

> Update 10:15AM PST: A defense official has reportedly confirmed the attacks > to Fusion reporter Brett LoGiurato, who tweeted "Defense official: "We can > confirm that the U.S. Central Command Twitter account was compromised > earlier today."

[1] [http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us- canada-30785232](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30785232)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm dying here laughing. For those who are not aware, those screenshots have the logo of America's Army, a game developed by the US military. This is either a very good troll, or they just hacked the page of some clan somewhere. Either way, very funny.

<comment><USER5> sigh

[http://www.army.mil/](http://www.army.mil/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's the relevant pastebin for the lazy: [http://pastebin.com/Y2spP7y9](http://pastebin.com/Y2spP7y9)

Unfortunately it looks like the 4shared files were taken down.</comment>


Slack for YC S18 applicants - <AUTHOR> About 100 of us were in a chat group when notifications went out last night and many people said having a community was very helpful.
Now there's a slack channel for the next batch of YC applicants.
yc218.slack.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone, please just email me to ask for an invitation link.

Please make subject= "YC s18 slack"

email@example.com

[https://join.slack.com/t/ycs18/signup](https://join.slack.com/t/ycs18/signup)</comment>


Twitter's Internal Strategy Laid Bare: To Be "The Pulse Of The Planet"  - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/16/twitters-internal-strategy-laid-bare-to-be-the-pulse-of-the-planet/?awesm=tcrn.ch_62z&utm_campaign=techcrunch&utm_content=shorturl&utm_medium=tcrn.ch-copypaste&utm_source=direct-tcrn.ch <comment><USER2> Oh, look! Here's how "newsworthy" the content TechCrunch got from Twitter was: so newsworthy that they're going to trickle it out one-per-day to maximize page views.

Again. I hate to be a killjoy. But last time I suggested this, it worked, so maybe it'll work this time too:

What happened to TechCrunch could happen to any YC company, or any company with HN contributors at it.

We can't make TechCrunch manage their publication differently, but we can refuse to promote what they're doing here. Just hit the "flag" button on these stories.

That's what I just did.

<comment><USER3> Do not use the flag button for things like this. That's not what it's for. This is not spam or off-topic.

If you don't want to support the story, don't vote for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It seems like this might be the 'high tide mark' for both of these companies.. Techcrunch has definitely jumped the shark, and Twitter just might be close as well.

Twitter was on Oprah. Google is the new bad. Facebook is parentized. Myspace is still 13. Blogs are overtagged. Digg is all CAPS. Reddit is overtaken with athiesm.

When are we going to start laughing at the social media sharefest frenzy of this decade? It started with blogging, and it's going to end with twitter.

We're going to end up just like 1995, making our own websites with funky counters.

<comment><USER5> "Reddit is overtaken with athiesm."

Eh?! There are many things one could say it's been overtaken by, but atheism is pretty low on the list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Nevertheless, the publication of stolen documents is irresponsible and we absolutely did not give permission for these documents to be shared. Out of context, rudimentary notes of internal discussions will be misinterpreted by current and future partners jeopardizing our business relationships."

-<http://blog.twitter.com/2009/07/someone-call-security.html>

Sounds like the beginnings of a law suit.

</comment><comment><USER7> No one mentioned the Tipjoy part?! What is _wrong_ with you people??

Twitter likes Tipjoy "has good vision" but Tipjoy is missing the "real banking" part.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for pointing that out, I missed it the first time. See it here: <http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/73.png>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'll admit that the info is somewhat interesting. But I have absolutely no respect for Techcrunch anymore. For a company/blog that garnered a ton of respect over the last few years for helping to promote interesting new startups, they have strayed far from that ideal. That they would accept information that was obtained illegally and then proceed to broadcast that to the world is dishonorable. They can't be trusted to be responsible any more.

For any number of upcoming and existing startups whose founders and employees read HN, I can't imagine that they would want any kind of ties to Techcrunch after this. I know that I sure as hell don't.

<comment><USER10> Did you read the article?

This sentence is in the first paragraph:

"... we've spent much of the last 36 hours talking directly to Twitter about the right way to go about doing that."

<comment><USER11> For what it's worth:

ev: "@TechCrunch @arrington "we have been given the green light by Twitter to post this information" What?! By whom? That's not our understanding"

(<http://twitter.com/ev/status/2676203744>)

<comment><USER12> Alright, that's pretty damning. As of now, I'm jumping on the "let's ban Techcrunch links from HN" bandwagon.

<comment><USER13> As much as I'd love to see this happen (more power to VentureBeat and ReadWriteWeb and, hell, even Mashable), Paul and Mike are friends so it's not happening. As much as I get my hopes up every month when this debate comes up, the guy who controls the bans has been pretty consistent on his position here.

<comment><USER14> Wow had no idea personal relationships were the factor overriding community pressure.

<comment><USER13> TechCrunch also gives YCombinator sites tons of write-ups. It's not anything underhanded, just a relationship that both sides benefit from - at the cost of the people who think Hacker News would be better without Arrington's peculiar brand of self-righteous yellow journalism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I refuse to follow links to techcrunch.com (see 'ethics')

Added: techcrunch is making profit from a crime of privacy violation. this should be simply condemned. nothing else.

<comment><USER16> When the storm fades away you will go back to the site. TC knows this.

<comment><USER17> No I won't. I've been refusing to follow any links to TC for a while now and other than the occasional tinyurl'd link on twitter I've managed to avoid that cesspool entirely. If news.yc would stop voting up every article they write to the front page I wouldn't even have to read their linkbait headlines either.

<comment><USER16> I stand corrected then. Respect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18>
       user = unique individual having a conscious twitter experience in a given week

and they want a billion users like that? Will never happen

<comment><USER19> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Hairy_Audacious_Goal>

<comment><USER20> Why stop at a billion, then? Why not a trillion?

I think the point is that a billion users who log in once a week is not unrealistic, it's virtually impossible.

<comment><USER19> Over 2 Billion cellphones in the world - according to WolframAlpha (<http://www06.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=cellphones+worldwide>)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm not sure I want any closed technology owned and operated by one company to become "the pulse of the internet".

<comment><USER22> Agreed, it was bad enough when IM was stuck in various closed networks, but at least then no single network had a monopoly. We need to think about how to build a distributed/federated Twitter alternative. Anyone want to get together to brainstorm how this could work?

<comment><USER23> There have been myriad Twitter alternatives since long before Twitter existed, most of them having vastly superior functionality. The masses have made it crystal clear that they will accept none but the most crippled and proprietary offering in this domain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> TechCrunch's Faustian dilemma: to sell or not to sell its moral soul (or what's left of it) for an astronomical number of page views?

Gee, that was hard - now where's the damn 'post' button?

</comment><comment><USER24> It's interesting how difficult it seems to be for people -- in this situation in particular -- to formulate an opinion independent of their emotional bias(es) with respect to the parties here. It seems like the people who are fond of Twitter (and let's just say 'not-so-fond' of TC), are playing the 'ethics of journalism' card a bit hastily.

The other side has taken to simplifying the circumstances involved in a way that's willfully reductive. The details matter.

The info was stolen. It's out there. It's really unfortunate that it happened. It would have been a kind gesture for TC not to publish the info, but then again, kindness pays minimum wage. Anyone who claims that they're somehow offended or appalled that TC published in this case is being intellectually inconsistent -- every major news outlet gets their hands dirty on a daily basis to get headlines.

TC displayed some ambiguous ethics, to be sure -- it's just a bit childish to claim that the scenario is somehow unique when the other party happens to be popular.

</comment><comment><USER25> I don't get the Marissa Mayer thread. She asked for stats on Twitter's growth but there is already Google Analytics code on all Twitter pages.

<comment><USER26> Google employees spying on Google Analytics accounts would definitely be considered "evil."

<comment><USER25> This is very interesting then that Google gave up urge of cheating, and actually follows the rules.

<comment><USER27> Imagine what Techcrunch, the fence of the internet, would do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I remember a company (FuckedCompany) during the first bubble that all they did was publish private memos, conversations, and documents. I was disappointed to see TC deciding not only prolong the story for days, but also publish some of these documents. What will they do next for traffic?

</comment><comment><USER29> Twitter's best shot at making money is to sue TechCrunch. Other than that it sounds like they don't have many ideas but need to make $68m by 2010. Good luck!

<comment><USER16> +1 for humor

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is really cool, gives a sense for how these discussions happen at other startups. Some similarities with our startup's discussions too, makes me feel... _normal_.

</comment><comment><USER30> The big story here, and what's circulating on quite a few of the google news reports about this incident, is the apparent "insecurity" of the cloud. If these documents were on an internal network, it would have been much, much harder for the hacker to grab them since most internal networks are firewalled.

This is a huge blow to all of us web app developers looking to sell apps since things like this will make corporations untrustworthy of our defacto security system (username/password + forgot password).

Google Docs needs a "high security" option that removes these easy access points (forgot password), and other web app developers handling sensitive data need to follow suit.

We can fill in that role through some kind of manual process of confirming a person's identity via other means (not entirely sure how, but i'm sure there's a way).

<comment><USER29> Just add an optional access limit by IP address.

<comment><USER30> That actually sounds like a great solution for some companies. Wonder if Google Docs will add this anytime soon.

It'll make the cloud app much less useful (mobile access issues, etc). However I think its worth it in certain cases, like if you're a high profile startup or a bank.

<comment><USER29> If it's available as a per file option it balances the usefulness. For documents that need high security you can choose it. Mobile devices should still be able to connect in through a VPN right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Very interesting read. They seem pretty savvy.

It's got to be a concern to them that Facebook has done all of the things they brainstormed in the "how would Facebook kill us" meeting. I wonder what their "how would Facebook kill us" meetings since then have gone?

<comment><USER16> There's no doubt the content is fascinating - but they're _private_ documents. TC had no right to publish them, and we should all feel a little guilty for in part legitimizing TC's decision to publish them.

<comment><USER32> There are a lot of stories that were based on leaked documents.

Stories on watergate, Abu Ghraib, etc. were published because somebody leaked something private.

I have to admit though that they have more significance than Twitter.

<comment><USER33> In those cases, there was a legitimate public interest in having them leaked and published. Very different.

<comment><USER32> So who decides what is public interest or not?

Twitter has millions of users. We provide some private data to them. Shouldn't we know what is being discussed privately on how they will use it?

<comment><USER34> When it has to do with the government, the public has a right to expect transparency. With a private organization, its different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Seeing all these internal meeting notes published makes me want to never write anything down.

<comment><USER7> Why? Are you embarrassed by how crappy your note-taking skills are? :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> It would be wrong for Techcrunch to NOT publish this info, because by not publishing, it would simply circulate within the elite by other means. Techcrunch's friends, and any of the many companies with a stake in this, would find a way to get the info.

Its the little guy who is disadvantaged by this not coming out.

Whatever damage this leak has caused is not from TC publishing this, but from their negotiating partners getting this info. Which would happen no matter what TC did.

<comment><USER37> What value is this information to the "little guy"? If the only value is "that's interesting" then essentially nothing.

<comment><USER30> Interesting = value

<comment><USER38> interesting != value. Consider the most boring class you took and how you later discovered it was all applicable.

<comment><USER30> I never said it works in reverse. not interesting != not valuable

Hoever... something thats interesting is valuable. Always. If you can capture mindshare, you can convert it to dollars. Plain and simple

<comment><USER39> I'm not sure where you're coming from with the position that "interesting = value." Just look at the top stories on Reddit and Digg (or MSM, for that matter).

What tweaks the _interesting_ receptors is often formulaic, sensationalistic, base, pablum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Has anyone thought of the possibility that Twitter leaked those documents intentionally? Do we have a statement from them dealing with the whole affair?

<comment><USER41> [http://blog.twitter.com/2009/07/twitter-even-more-open- than-...](http://blog.twitter.com/2009/07/twitter-even-more-open-than-we- wanted.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> could the whole thing be a stunt?

</comment><comment><USER43> I hope this story doesn't get killed, because the actual details are pretty interesting.

</comment><comment><USER44> If I'm reading this right, they predicted 25m users by the end of 2009?

As of July, they apparently have 40m. Cool.

<comment><USER45> They seem to want 25 million active, living people using Twitter. 40 million accounts is not the same thing. See this post about the difference between active and total users.

[http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/07/the-difference-between- total...](http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/07/the-difference-between-total-uses- and-active-users.html)

<comment><USER44> Oh, so I wasn't reading it right :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> it does look like another twitter astroturf, they really haven't reported anything negative about twitter. All the things they posted, could be used as a promotion to pitch twitter to investors.

<comment><USER16> Like the part where they call Google and Microsoft a 'distraction'

Or diss Marissa Mayer?

<comment><USER13> Upon reading the diss of Marissa Mayer I found myself liking Twitter a little more. But then, that's a very geeky reaction coming from somebody whose friends imitate the Marissa Mayer laugh for fun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> This is a perfect case study in the importance of choosing a good password and ensuring that everyone in your organisation thinks about security.

</comment><comment><USER47> This is an advertorial.

</comment><comment><USER48> Mike did not just post this.

</comment><comment><USER49> The first person to guess Michael Arrington's email password, grab all his secret docs about his upcoming tablet computer and publish them, wins. Let's see TC swallow that poison pill.

</comment><comment><USER50> cynical view here: it is possible twitter is using techcrunch to push disinformation to confuse its competitors.</comment>


Offer HN: Professional startup hosting Nginx, Varnish, Load balance, Sharding - <AUTHOR>

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If you're interested in learning more about this offering, email me personally at joe!unixy.net. I'll be happy to set up a phone call too.
Cheers,
Joe <comment><USER2> Joe, thank you for your offer - sounds very interesting. I'll drop you an email for further details.</comment>